Rock Island
by CorporalCyrano
Summary: The Marine Corps is mentioned twice in World War Z. The more interesting of the two was an Army vet of the battle of Yonkers ? , alluding that some of the worst fighting in the conflict took place here. Here's a brief couple of chapters. Please comment
1. Chapter 1

_**I ran into Sergeant Hansbarger quite by accident, as one of my interviews called for me to enter one of the largely isolated Veteran's encampments, little more than shanty towns, that seem to spring up outside of all the major cities since the end of formal conflict. Through casual conversation he revealed that he was one of the Marines that held Rock Island for over a year, easily considered one of the most difficult enclaves in the war. When they were finally "relieved" (He imparted to me early on that the few survivors of Rock Island, being mostly veterans, preferred that term as opposed to "rescue") I immediately rescheduled my prior engagement so that he could recount his story.**_

**How did you wind up on Rock Island?**

It was called a "Presidential Recall" back then. In certain circumstances the President can call back service members who were way past the end of their active service. You've heard of the Army's "Stop-Loss"? Think of it as a retroactive stop-loss. My first tour in Iraq I met a Staff Sergeant who had served in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and then subsequently Iraq under one of those. It had never been used on such a large scale before, but even before things got way out of hand, I guess the President knew this conflict would be different. And then of course, part of the Marine Corps mission is to go anywhere and do anything the President directs. I guess it's just the nature of being "The Nation's shock troops."

**So why weren't their more of you?**

Not enough time. The conflict broke out in a matter of days or weeks, not months. Frankly I'm surprised _we_ made it out there. Then again the 1st Marine Provisional Brigade went from a loose assemblage of civilians to landing on the Beaches at Inchon in under two weeks back in Korea, so it probably isn't that unprecedented. Originally the idea was to secure certain locations of strategic importance. Rock Island was one of the Nations primary Armories and foundries ever since the Civil War. It's almost as if they thought we'd be using cannon against Zed. Anyway, we were about two provisional rifle platoons worth when we started. That lasted for all of about two weeks.

**Were all of you veterans?**

God no! Most of the (Non-Commissioned officers) were, but the majority of our strength was pretty fresh out of Boot Camp. And we had one butter-Bar straight out of TBS.

**Butter-Bar? TBS?**

Sorry, I'm so used to talking to other veterans I forget myself sometimes. A Butter-Bar is a derogatory reference to a 2nd Lieutenant freshly commissioned and usually just as dumb as any other dumb-ass that just got out of training. TBS is the school that Marine officers go to learn their jobs. This particular Lieutenant, like so many other ones meant well, but suffered from ignorance about their own ignorance. Fortunately the Detachment commander was a Captain who was prior enlisted, and we had a Major that was stationed there as a liaison to the Army. They saved a lot of lives. The death of the Major was one of the hardest things for us to endure out there.

**How did he die? What happened?**

Well, _(sigh_) it was an Army post, so naturally, they assigned the Marines to pull perimeter security. At first Zed only came in ones and twos. Nothing too difficult. We lost two guys before we learned to take headshots _only_. We're trained to do that anyway, so it wasn't anything too serious. The Major just made that part of our (rules of engagement) and we were set for about a week and a half. But then, as the infection spread, we started to see them come in waves. So we cordoned off all the bridges, set up some barriers to slow down the Zed and channel them to where we could shoot them better. That was one of our staples in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know what they say about always fighting the last war. We were focusing on how normal humans would try to get on the Island. At the risk of stating the obvious, Rock Island was an island, surrounded by water. Zed doesn't swim, but he doesn't need to breathe either, does he? One night, we had a whole lot of them from upstream get on the Island from the North. Came in right behind us. Our HMMWV's were cut off. To make things worse, Zed was only coming in such small numbers that that one Butter-Bar decided we should only carry 20 rounds in our combat load so that we would have to conserve ammo. God damn that was a shit-storm…

We were staying in a cluster of buildings in the middle of the Island. We had grown accustomed to hearing pot-shots every once in a while, but once we heard the Machine guns letting loose we knew it had to be bad. I popped my head out and saw the issue. We had a fire team, four Marines, on each of the three bridges. That's eighty rounds between them, plus 200 rounds of 7.62 for the (machine gun), and maybe three 40mm grenades for their (launchers). Plus, there was a generator on the bridge powering a flood lamp. It's almost cliché now to say that Zed likes to cluster around bright lights and loud noises, but back then we didn't understand that. There was a stream of Zed between them and us growing thicker and thicker around them. In short, they were almost fucked...


	2. Chapter 2

**Almost?**

Not to disrespect any of the other branches, a lot of them died too, and we had Army and a couple Air Force there, but let's get something straight; those were Marines out there. We were not going to leave them out there. Fortunately the Captain saw exactly what I did and had already given the Detachment Gunnery Sergeant his marching orders. Two squads posted up on the roof to provide "guardian angel" and designated marksman duties while the other two secured the building and tried to keep the first floor clear so that we didn't find ourselves in the same spot as those poor bastards in the HMMWV's. I was one of the Marksmen.

At first we tried to cut a swath through the crowd of Zed with the Machine guns. Have you ever seen what a hail of 50 calibre rounds will do to a mob of Zombies? Ha ha ha. I can still see all the writhing, distorted limbs swimming in their own goo! There was a problem with this method, though: we're trained to fire in bursts for accuracy, ammo discipline and to avoid overheating our barrels. Well, we'd do this and it seemed like every time we made a hole, it closed in five seconds. So the Captain calls a cease-fire just long enough to issue his follow-on orders to us. He wanted my squad to cut a swathe in the horde and keep cutting about 5 meters ahead of our boys as they ran. The marksmen were to pick off the stragglers and any Zed who got too close at the back end of the gap. All we were doing was stalling for time really, trying to buy enough of it for our guys to run back. Once the plan was in place, we just had to get someone out there to let the forward elements know, and at that moment they had almost been driven into their HMMWV's.

**Couldn't someone call them on the radios or something?**

Well, that's a nice enough thought, but our comm went dead for lack of power three days before, and the irony of that was even if someone would consider us important enough to resupply, and I doubt it, we'd have to raise them on comm first. The big green weenie was tagging us pretty hard in a lotta ways back then. Bohica, that's what we had to do. Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Where was I?

**You were saying that someone had to go out to the bridges and tell the…**

Oh, yeah. So we had to send some Marines out to pass the word to the HMMWV's. They broke one of the squads from the top into three fire teams, one for each bridge. The Squad that was left linked together two belts of ammo so that they wouldn't have to waste time reloading. I was one of the fire team leaders that went outside. I got my guys into a tactical column, not so much because it mattered, it still wound up being a cramped little box with one of us at each corner, but because I thought my team would hold up better if I demonstrated that we were still doing things by the book, and they'd probably be more comfortable if they had orders to follow. Gives them a sense of order, purpose, you know? If they knew how scared I actually was they would've fallen apart. So I was being brave so as not to let them down and they were doing the same for me. I relayed to the roof to drop a grenade five meters in front of the door outside, to make a short hole to work with. There weren't as many Zed around us because we were using our light discipline, so I figured one grenade should do it to get us through the first mass and well on our way to the second. About a minute later the boom shook the building and we were off. The frag got about half the Zed but we knocked out the rest pretty quick. Once that was momentarily cleared we bolted, still in column, until we hit the second mass. It took us about twenty seconds to get there.

As the Team leader I had the (grenade launcher) on my weapon, so I took a few pot-shots and then let off a 40mm (grenade) about 30 meters out, then kept rotating with my SAW gunner so that one of us were putting the hurt on Zed at any given second. It meant we were exposed for a little longer, but it was worth it. Then my A-Gunner noticed something. The HMMWV was literally covered in Zed. The other fire-team must have withdrawn inside, and who knew if they got the cover closed on the turret. We took out a lot of Zed, but there were still too many left to just frag them all, besides which the HMMWV's weren't that heavily armored, and I'd probably end up killing the guys in the truck. My SAW gunner already went through two drums and he only had one left to cover us on the return trip. They were stuck, and if we kept still much longer _we_ were going to be stuck. We had to do something…


	3. Chapter 3

Right about that time, it would've been smart to just shuffle off, because we had missed our window of opportunity and no matter what we did we were going to make more noise, more light, and more everything that attracts Zed like a moth to a flame. Frankly I didn't see how the hell we were going to survive. By that time we were exposed. I didn't have any choice but to reposition my fire team on a copse in direct line of sight to the Hummer. That's when it hit me. We were fucked, and I mean proper fucked. The flow of Zed had been stemmed a bit, but our little fireworks display, besides depleting our ammunition seriously, caused some of the Zed to redirect their attention to me and my guys. Zed started swarming and our little circle just kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I ordered our bayonets fixed.

**Why bayonets?**

At that point, we only had enough ammunition for the trip back, and maybe a little extra. Certainly not enough to mount a proper assault to free our buddies. If we could coordinate our fires, we might've stood a chance, but there wasn't any chance of communicating that to everybody. That's when the Major pulled what was possibly the ballsiest stunt I'd ever seen.

Right as we're getting hunkered down to go hand to hand it wasn't looking good. All our training teaches us to go for the heart and my boys were doing what they were trained to do. Problem was that the best that did was keep a few Zed at a minor distance and when we started going for the heads, no mean task considering it was a small, highly mobile target. We were so amped up we were stabbing right through the skulls. What a sight! Well, eventually they'd get stuck and we had to yank our rifles free. What an unholy mess. And the Zed just kept coming. Then the ground shook and body parts were flying everywhere. Then again, and again.

The Major got it into his head to go after the swarm with claymores. He barely got them rigged before he had to blow them, and after three of them, he got his own little following. Now claymore's can be just as dangerous to the hunter as the huntee, and the Major didn't have a fantastic amount of time to get out of there or the precise angular measurements to make sure he was entirely out of the blast area. He must've caught a little bit of shrapnel because in the floodlights we could see a few ink blots growing menacingly on his left camouflage blouse.

**Was he hurt badly?**

Well he wasn't hurt goodly.

**I'm sorry, but you know what I mean.**

Yeah, we didn't know at the time, and in the end it wasn't what killed him, but it probably made a difference in what he did next. (The Sgt casts his eyes downward and effects what seem to be a painful grin)

**Would you like to take a break or something?**

Nah, I'm just remembering how the Spartans were always looking for a "Beautiful Death". As ugly as the Major's was, I wonder if it might've qualified. So anyway, where was I?

**He just took some shrapnel…**

Oh yeah, well he had two other guys with him, and I thought I saw him glance down at his side. Then he ordered The other two to pass off their grenades, a clip apiece and told them to bolt back to the 'barracks'. At first, they tried to argue, but I guess he pulled rank or something because in the end, he got his way.

Now one thing you have to understand about the Major, he was always a flashy son of a bitch. He loved theatrics and used them frequently. I remember one time we were all sitting around eating what was left of our MRE's and no one wanted to eat the Cheese and Veggie Omelette ones. Seriously, everything in those bastards were inedible, but we had to eat them because supplies were low and they started being the only ones left. That had a real big impact on morale. The Major wasn't liking the fact that some Marines were going hungry rather than eat those MRE's, so what does this guy do? He has a PFC act like his manservant and between the two of them they pulled out the good china, the good silverware, like the kind the General's use, and there he was; Eating an inedible MRE and chatting away with the guys like we were at some swanky 5 star restaurant. He even had the PFC where an apron and he sipped the carbohydrate beverage base from a crystal wine glass. Afterwards, he said that Cheese and Veggie Omelettes were the only ones he was going to eat from then on. We all got a big kick out of that. It may not sound like much, but if it was good enough for the oak leaf, then no PFC was going to not eat it. So anyway, where was I?

**You were saying how flashy the Major was…**

Oh yeah, well had one of those Mameluke swords, the thin, curvy ones that only Marine Officer's can wield. It's barely worth shit in a fight, and because of this they were typically only used for ceremonial purposes. Well anyway, he led the charge out the door by brandishing his sword. Now that he was going alone he whipped that son-of-a-bitch out and started hacking off heads as he was sprinting off to the side, evidently trying to draw off the Zed. It worked. He popped off a few flashbangs, lobbed a few grenades, at first he was making one hell of a ruckus. Now, not all the Zed went after him, but enough for us to make our stand. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but there wasn't any time to question anything. I told my guys that we were going to make a break for the Hummer. My guys were smiling again. Marines don't like sitting on the defensive, after all. We're offensive creatures at heart, and yes, I do use that as a double entendre. So we started hacking our way to the truck. The Major had drawn off enough Zed that we were able to push through what was left of them, and the closer we got to the truck the more energy we had, the fiercer we got. Towards the end, we were butt-stroking their skulls and kicking them off the hood. We took a few cuts and scrapes, but we got there. I ordered my guys to extricate our brothers and I waited to pop my smoke to call for the fire support. It only took a minute and a half to get our guys ready to run, but the whole time I was casting glances over the Major's way. He had gone off into the shadow and every once in a while I'd see a flash of a grenade or a flashbang, after a while, it was the muzzle flash from an M16. Zed must've been too close for him to use without further injuring himself.

I turned my attention back to my guys. The plan of attack was issued and understood so I popped my smoke and waited for the fireworks. The Zed had started flowing again by then. Then it started, the angry tat, tat, tat of the talking guns.

**Talking guns are machine guns?**

Yes and no. "Talking guns" is a concept we use to illustrate that whenever one gun is reloading or reassessing a target, there is always another gun firing. That way we maintain continuous fire support.

I don't think I ever sprinted faster in my life. I was the guy in the back, pushing my guys forward. Now I can understand their hesitation, with all those tracer rounds landing just a few yards in front of you, nobody wants to run INTO fire, but the hole was closing in around me and I wasn't about to be Zed bait. I kept yelling at them to keep running, that those 18 and 19 year old kids shouldn't be getting outran by some guy in his thirties. (Laughs) That was all it took.

**So what happened to the Major?**

Well, by the time we got back in, I ran to the roof, not even checking to see if the others were in or not. I posted up there with what was left of my ammo. We had to be about two hundred yards away at that point, and we couldn't provide much cover fire for the Major, because we'd just end up killing him. He was surrounded. The crowd was thinning though. We were all rooting for him. The only light we had to see how he was doing came from his muzzle flashes. The bright, sudden flash of the M16 gave way to the duller, more sluggish flash from his pistol. That's when we knew he was gone. But he got past one reload and kept plugging bullets. By that time he was probably close to bleeding out, but he kept fighting. Then out of nowhere he started yelling and cursing at them and one flash after another kept coming. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, silence. His pistol was dry. It had been so loud for so long that it seemed almost queer that the silence started creeping in over the dull moans of the Zed. We thought he was done.

**He wasn't?**

Oh, he probably knew that he was, but he was always thinking of us, and the last thoughts in his mind as he was fighting them off, or at least I like to think so, it's not exactly like any of us could ask him, were to set a good example for his men. He was that kind of officer. A few beats passed and all of us were convinced he was dead. I looked around and saw a few of our guys choking up, and several others just slack-jawed in disbelief. We couldn't believe what had just happened. I couldn't let my guys break down like that, so I did the only thing I could do, especially given any slight chance that the Major was still alive. I just started singing.

**I'm sorry, did you say singing?**

Yeah, the Marine Hymn. At first it was weak and probably barely audible, but then some others picked up the chorus and next thing you know, we were all doing it. That probably sounds absolutely ridiculous, but what else could we do? Some of the Zed shifted towards the barracks and away the Major's area. That was fine by us. We started singing louder and louder. As they filtered off, we could pick them off one by one. Then something amazing happened. All of us _knew _he was dead. There was no way he could've still been alive, but we got to the part at the very end of the Hymn where it goes " If the Army and the Navy, ever look on heaven's scenes, they will find the streets are guarded, by United States Marines". A miracle happened.

We heard the loudest, most ferocious warcry that ever escaped the mouth of a Marine from where the Major had surely died already and I could've swore I saw a few more flashes, dull, barely perceptible, but there nonetheless.

**So what happened then?**

Then we shut up again. When we mopped up the next day, I made sure to get over to find the Major. That was a tough job because it involved separating entire mounds of corpse and half-corpses and less. Sure enough, at the bottom of the biggest pile, his slide was locked to the rear and dropped to his side. What was left of him was a bloody mangled mess, indistinguishable from all the Zed that he killed except his right hand, and then I knew what those last flashes were. There, in his right hand was a broken Mameluke sword the other end lodged in the neck of some fortunate Zed. It must've broken as he fell.

We cleared the rest away and gave the Major the best ceremony we could, but we had to cremate him. We kept him up on a mantle behind the CO's desk, with both shards of his sword placed cross-wise above the make-shift urn. The day we got rescued, we cast his ashes over the Island. That wasn't the worst thing that happened on the Island, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the bravest thing I saw while I was there.


End file.
